Amid the deluge of post-State of the Union coverage Tuesday night, there was a similar litany of praise for President Obama’s final such speech with notable highlights coming from ABC as contributor Donna Brazile touted it as “a good exclamation point” for his presidency and correspondent David Wright spinning it as the President “pleading for unity” instead of “rub[bing] salt in the Republican wounds.”
Over on CNN, the moments immediately after the speech concluded saw Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer hailing the “very, very forceful speech by the President hitting so many issues clearly designed to try to solidify his legacy” with The Lead host Jake Tapper comparing it to a speech Obama gives to conclude a movie about his presidency.
Going first to ABC, longtime Democratic strategist and current DNC official Donna Brazile told ABC News chief anchor and former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos that the “speech embodied just the vision that he laid out back in 2004, the determination as a President in 2009, to change our politics to come to Washington D.C. to actually fix things.”
Brazile shrewdly described the President’s numerous executive actions as examples of him having “decided” that he would go “ahead and begin to fight for the American people.”
“I thought his speech, the tone, the delivery, the style, it was really exciting. A good exclamation point for seven great years,” Brazile gushed.
Summarizing the speech on the early Wednesday edition of Nightline, correspondent David Wright grew sentimental right from the start:
The next time we hear the sergeant in arms make that familiar announcement, a different president will be walking into the chamber and glad handing his way down the aisle. Tonight was Barack Obama's last State of the Union, his parting shot, at this point he's playing for the history books.
While Obama used “change” as a key term in his campaign lingo, Wright lamented that Tuesday night symbolized the word taking “on a different meaning, shaded by seven years of compromises, disappointments, and unintended consequences” as “[t]he office and its responsibilities have changed demand, visibly as it always does.”
Brushing aside the omission of Iran’s capturing of 10 U.S. Sailors hours earlier, Wright lectured that: “[O]verall, Obama didn't rub salt in the Republican wounds. He pleaded for unity.”
Wright went on to later complain about how “the State of the Union may be sound but the state of our politics is more like that Capitol Dome, shrouded in scaffolding, hard hat zone full of dangers.”
Offering the first words on CNN’s airwaves when the President finished, an excited Blitzer exclaimed to Tapper:
A very, very forceful speech by the President hitting so many issues clearly designed to try to solidify his legacy. He was blunt and some not so is subtle. Very tough criticism of presidential candidates on several very sensitive issues. Jake Tapper, this was a speech that the president wants the American public to remember.
Before Tapper went onto expose the numerous partisan shots the President took throughout his remarks, the CNN anchor employed a movie analogy to explain where this final State of the Union would fit in a film about Obama:
This is the book end in the film of Obama. This is the end speech. This is the one that you run at the very end after you started the movie, the drama with those early-day speeches, perhaps the one from the 2004 Democratic Convention when he’s first introduced to the people.
The excitement on the part of Blitzer returned just over an hour later when results of an instant survey poll came into CNN on how those who responded perceived the President’s speech. Despite repeatedly mentioning that only those who watched the speech participated and that it was skewed Democratic, Blitzer cheered the findings:
Very interesting results....look at this. 53 percent of those who watched the speech, the speech watchers had a very positive reaction to the President's remarks tonight. 20 were somewhat positive and 25 percent negative. The very positive reaction to the President’s is as high as it has ever been, reaching the same level as it was in 2013....Remember, this poll doesn't reflect the views of all Americans only those who watched the speech, a group that’s more Democratic than the population as a whole. We're going to get more results for you but, Jake, these are fascinating. The most positive reaction among those who watched the speech of any speech going back to even 2013 which was pretty high.
The relevant portions of the transcript from ABC’s coverage of the State of the Union 2016 on January 12 can be found below.
ABC’s State of the Union 2016
January 12, 2016
10:13 p.m. Eastern
DONNA BRAZILE: George, I thought his speech embodied just the vision that he laid out back in 2004, the determination as a President in 2009, to change our politics to come to Washington, D.C. to actually fix things and the President that decided, you know, there was so much he could do with Congress, but rather, he went ahead and began to fight for the American people, turning the economy around, health care so millions of Americans now have access to it. I thought his speech, the tone, the delivery, the style, it was really exciting. A good exclamation point for seven great years and one last thing, George, the President tonight said he's not finished. He's going to continue to fight and he's going to start by trying to fix our politics. I liked that approach, as well.
